


Hurry up, we’re dreaming

by Taeyn



Series: echo, I will not talk with thee [2]
Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French, The Likeness - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Fever, Hurt/Comfort, Vulnerability, Whitethorn House, are never what you expect, late night conversations with Daniel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 22:10:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7909468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taeyn/pseuds/Taeyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>I dropped the candle. It was all I could do to keep myself from screaming. There, standing in the centre of our bedraggled garden, Daniel March stood looking up at me, his eyes hard and unblinking in the cold. I wanted to duck. I wanted to disappear. The molten wax had splattered over my ankles, a sharp, biting sensation that died almost as soon as it began. I could hear my own breathing, ragged and halting, and it frightened me more than any silence ever would.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurry up, we’re dreaming

Sometimes, it seemed the house were older than the land. That Whitethorn came first, and Glenskehy simply rose up to meet it, swelling and bubbling out of the woods and stone and ivy like these very walls had called to it. Like it couldn’t stand to be alone.

A house like that is never really silent. We could have plastered every crack, and still heard the wind lick through its veins. Sometimes it whispered when there was no breeze at all. Sometimes you’d hear a false step down an empty hallway. I never truly felt alone when I was left in the house, no matter how long the others had been gone.

I’ll admit it made sleeping easier. When I was first in college, I dallied in various soundscapes- rainforests and ocean waves and whatnot- preferring that to the echo of whatever rumour was cutting around campus. I abandoned the habit along with my degree. Now I was back in college and sleep was evading me all over again, though for very different reasons. But those tiny, yearning creaks of the woodwork, the rattle of frost against a windowpane- they were the invisible presence that reminded me, night after night, that I wasn’t on my own. I could never be sure that I wasn’t living with four unconvicted killers. But I knew for certain I was living with generations of ghosts.

It was 11:59 when I woke. I remember those numbers, because Lexie didn’t have any sort of alarm clock, and the glare from my phone was achingly bright. My heartbeat had swollen, taut and racing in my throat, still pulling back from a dream. The door was closed, and, when my eyes adjusted, I could see the chair beneath the handle was still in place. What was wrong then?

I was freezing, firstly. I hadn’t quite hit on the right combination of cardigans and blankets yet, waking up sweating and shivering in turn. Maybe a bit hungry? I wouldn’t normally risk waking anyone with a trip down to the kitchen, but in truth, a mumbled conversation at midnight was probably more likely to turn up something than all of our literary debates combined. Rugging myself in an oversized anorak and some fairly festive wool socks, I felt just about brave enough to light a candle too, some bed-haired parody of Lady Macbeth in the making. That was when I looked out the window.

I dropped the candle. It was all I could do to keep myself from screaming. There, standing in the centre of our bedraggled garden, Daniel March stood looking up at me, his eyes hard and unblinking in the cold. I wanted to duck. I wanted to disappear. The molten wax had splattered over my ankles, a sharp, biting sensation that died almost as soon as it began. I could hear my own breathing, ragged and halting, and it frightened me more than any silence ever would.   

I had no idea at that point how much he knew, or what I’d even done to raise his suspicions. The sleep-deprived, slightly irrational part of me even wondered if he’d known I’d wake up. Which, whilst I’ll admit does sound like a shot across the bow in hindsight, was the uncanny sort of coincidence that had a habit of following him around. Meanwhile, any chance luck on my part seemed to have remained well and truly back in Dublin. I was running on empty and I knew it, and there was nothing left for me to do but try. I raised a hand to him, forcing my mouth into my very best crooked, yawny, _Lexie_ sort of grin.

He didn’t smile back.

I took another step toward the window, slowly moving both arms as if I was flagging down a plane. I poked my tongue out, reprising one of the silly dance moves I had made up while we were wallpapering earlier that afternoon. Maybe it was having to swap into character that finally did it, but it was halfway through my ridiculous jig that the first doubt set in. I might’ve missed a trick in the past few days, but Daniel was ever deliberate over impulsive. The more I thought about it, the more him standing in the snow at midnight suddenly seemed like an intensely emotional and reckless move, with nothing to gain except perhaps a nasty case of hypothermia. My initial wash of relief turned dull and blunt in my stomach. Something was very, very wrong.

Forgetting the candle, my phone, or anything else that might have been useful, I wrenched back the bedroom door, my feet finding all the steps that didn’t echo. I slipped as I turned the corner through the living room, banging my knee into an old buffet and biting my tongue on a curse. Daniel had left the door to the patio ajar, and I could see a clan of snowflakes had nudged their way past the opening, melting into the unvarnished floorboards. I jogged beneath the hawthorn and across the speckled grass, expecting him to swap the blank expression for his usual unreadable one any second now.

“Hiya stranger,” I called out, like going for a wander at sub-zero temperatures was a common pastime between our dinners and morning coffees.

Daniel didn’t acknowledge me. He was standing in nothing more than a loose cotton t-shirt and pyjama pants, the former a light grey and the latter a deep navy blue. My throat tightened when I noticed the sweat bleeding through his torso, horribly reminiscent of a darker, redder patch I had seen in that same spot not a week before. On me.

“Phew, I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to think socks were a bad idea.” I rocked back and forth on my heels, the crisp shards of ice like needles between my toes. “Can I interest you in a pair of Dunne’s finest wellies instead?”

Daniel blinked, his gaze slowly shifting from the roof of the house to his surrounds, catching my eye with some kind of vague astonishment. Then he looked down at his bare feet. I gave him a chattery grin.

“Forgive me,” he murmured, his surprise quickly stowed beneath knifelike calm. “I hope I haven’t worried you. I was having trouble sleeping.”

“I was coming down for a tea anyhow,” I shrugged, untangling a hand from my sleeve to wipe my nose. God knows how long he’d been standing there. “I’ll make it two? Double sugar and extra milk?” I winked, knowing full well he took it quite the opposite.

“Ah. Well in that case.” He gave me a faint nod, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. We walked back toward the patio in silence, and it was only when we both reached to close the door that I felt his hand, chilled as the frost I’d been standing on.

“Yikes,” I breathed, which fetched a curious glance from him. “I’d say go warm up by the stove, but hell, in the time that’ll take, we might as well get the fireplace going.”

“If this is an abstract attempt sell me on double-glazing, I assure you, the time _that_ will take will exceed both.”

His eyes creased a fraction as he spoke, and it was with a degree of surprise that I realised he was working quite hard to reassure me. And now, without the dew or darkness to conceal it, the wild flush at his cheeks and hoarseness to his tone were doing nothing but. He turned away, thoughtful, stretching back the fingers on each of his hands. I couldn’t imagine him showing any more discomfort had he been self-stitching a bullet wound, but the pain was there, unmistakable. And the longer I looked, the less I thought it had to do with the cold after all.

“Blanket,” I said, darting across the living room to make it clear I meant business. “I’ll grab a towel for you to dry off.”

The curious expression returned, and I made a haphazard wave toward his shoulders. His hair was soaked and dripping, dampening what light patches of his t-shirt remained.

“Alright,” he offered, taking a seat on the couch. He made no move to wrap himself in the quilt, despite my pointed strategy of unfolding it.

I flicked the kettle on as I made for the washing machine, where we typically kept a stack of handtowels for whoever was doing the dishes. Unsurprisingly, Rafe’s clothes were still on the line from several days ago, and I unpegged one of the jumpers for Daniel to change into. I thought I heard him cough as I was walking back, but the kettle was making a low whistle by that point, and it could’ve been anything. I returned with two steaming mugs of camomile and the towel wedged beneath my arm. Daniel was staring at some undefined spot above the mantelpiece.

“Jumper, then towel,” I instructed, banging the teas down on the coffee table and sitting cross-legged beside him. He contemplated the orders with dignified amusement. It didn’t change the fact that his fingertips had started to turn a wispy shade of blue. “And then tell me a story. Something _studious_.”

This last request I threw in on a whim- it was the sort of unplanned subject-leap that Lexie supplied to take the pressure off, and usually gleaned a fond chuckle in exchange. This time, Daniel only returned a blurry squint, as if I was heralding him from some faraway place.

“I beg your pardon?”

He hesitated, then slid the wet t-shirt over his head, his hair obscuring his face as it fell back down. It only took an instant, and I had corrected my astonishment by the time our eyes met, but once again I felt the world tip beneath me. Running below the ridge of Daniel’s collarbone was a pale, vicious scar. It was years old, that much I could tell- but it was the kind of scar that would have sent him to the emergency room, the kind that warranted calls to friends or relatives. It was the very last thing I’d expected to catch me off-guard, and my pulse fluttered unpleasantly in the aftermath.

It was that easy. All he had to do was blink at the wrong moment, and he would have glimpsed my surprise. Lexie would have seen him shirtless countless times. It would’ve all been over, in a second. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like my tea at all.

“You couldn’t sleep either,” he said quietly, and I glanced up, accusing. He gave a rueful smile, and I realised he was responding to my earlier request for him to relay some silly anecdote. In barely an instant, that all seemed like terribly long ago.

“Well, not with you staring daggers at my windowsill in the dark,” I replied, haughty. Holding a conversation when I was this tired was starting to seem more and more like a bad idea. I had enough odds stacked against me as it was, and my head felt fuzzy and weighted, a pinching sensation brewing behind my eyes. I hadn’t been sleeping well the past few nights, and I couldn’t start taking naps without arousing concern- from everything I had gathered, it was clear Lexie operated at 150 watts, 200 percent of the time.

In what became my third shock of the night, Daniel gave a low, husky laugh, then smiled at me with genuine warmth. He gathered the towel I had brought and smudged it methodically over his hair. Then, he took the blanket and wrapped it around his middle, holding the other side open and giving the slightest jerk of his head to invite me to squeeze in. I did, and he tucked it around both of us. Up close, he looked just as ill, his face a stark mesh of bright cheekbones and cold, frost-stung mouth. But there was a softness to his usually steely eyes, and I realised, while he seemed to care very little for his condition at present, he had complied with my requests in a sincere attempt to at least make one of us feel better.

“I apologise for that. I’ve had a lot on my mind, and…” he exhaled, turning away from me to clear his throat. “Sorry. I’ve had a lot on my mind, and I thought some fresh air might help. It was a poor idea on my part.”

“Yeah, well. Guess I can forgive you for admitting to _one_ terrible idea per year,” I grinned, earning myself another half-smile.

“One for every hundred terrible Lexie-jokes in between,” he mused, then veered into his sleeve as he started coughing, only to clench his jaw and subdue the sensation moments later. I shook my head and stood up to fetch him some water. To my surprise, he touched a knuckle to my wrist, his glance unmistakable. _Please stay._

I sat close to him, letting him lean against my shoulder until he could breathe properly again. By that stage he looked worse than exhausted, the shadows beneath his eyes accentuating the harder angles of his features. Tentative, I took my hand and hovered it near his forehead, ready for the gracious refusal that was likely to follow. Instead, he sighed- a heavy, aching sort of sound- then leant forward to rest his brow to my palm, his eyelids falling shut at the coolness of my touch. His skin was burning.

“Jesus,” I whispered, not anticipating it to be quite as bad. A fever like that didn’t rear up in a matter of hours, and I started to wonder if this hadn’t been half the reason he couldn’t sleep in the first place.

“Mm,” he agreed, wincing as he sniffed. Endearingly, he reached his opposite hand to the one in my lap, giving my fingers a gentle squeeze as if to reassure me that he was, in fact, alright.

I threw him an affectionate grin, fishing around my pockets for the packet of tissues I knew I would find. Daniel apparently never carried anything that he didn’t want to rely upon (he had explained the philosophy behind this in great detail, however the main point we had gathered was not to count on Daniel for loose change or a spare pen), and borrowing Justin’s favourite anorak did have its advantages. “Here. You’ll feel better if you’re not leaking all over the place.”

Teasing, I handed him the tissues, acting on some vague sense that the more concerned Daniel felt about doing something, the more he appreciated someone being there to make light of it.

“Thank you for that insight, Lexie,” Daniel said dryly. For a moment I thought he was going to ignore the suggestion completely, but then his eyes crumpled at the seams, and he gave me a worn sort of smile. “Excuse me.”

Sipping a breath, he dipped his head aside, blowing his nose quite discreetly considering how unwell he sounded. He tucked the tissue away into his sleeve when he was done, then breathed out, less coarsely this time. I felt the constriction ease in my own chest. Now if I could only convince him to take some panadol, he might actually have a chance of recovering some time in the next week.

He glanced at me, and for some bizarre reason I wondered if he hadn’t anticipated my next move before I’d even thought it. Wry, he reached for his silver case and matches instead, thumbing a cigarette between his lips and closing his eyes as he lit it. While the rest of him was still shivering, Daniel managed to hold his hands steady until he was done. He took a deep, meditative pull, the paper burning amber in the dark. I sighed. His lips curled up at the corners.

“Give,” I said fondly, nudging his knee with my sock. I think I had some nebulous _if_ _you can’t beat them, join them_ sort of justification in mind, but really, it had been a rough night, a rougher week, and maybe some part of me did think we deserved to do something awful for ourselves.

Daniel exhaled the smoke away from me, then repositioned himself on the couch so that his head was laying in my lap. Eyes still calmly shut, he held the cigarette up, fingers loose and long and serene. In truth I had been referring to the case and matches, but there was something strangely comforting about the idea of sharing the cigarette with him instead. I collected the smoke between my fore and middle finger, letting the heat crackle through my lungs, warm and soothing.

We passed it between us for a while like that, surprisingly in synch, considering we were both lost in our own thoughts. Or each other’s. Mine were rarely so difficult to recall. It was me who extinguished the dregs on the side table though- I know because it was then that I noticed the first light lapping through our shabby curtains.

“Would you still like to hear a story?” Daniel said under his breath, so low that I almost missed it.

“Only if it’s a bed time story,” I mumbled, my head half buried in the blanket.

“Something _studious_ ,” he chuckled, which made me laugh too. Our fingers bumped together, and he took my hand to warm between his palms. Chilled as he was, my extremities were permanently in a state of turning into ice cubes from the knees and elbows down.

“I chose to study literature…” he started, his voice soft and grave at once, “because I thought that was as far as I could conceivably be from everything that didn’t matter, and as immersed as I could be in everything that did.”

I opened one eye, throwing him a crooked smile. “From life to stories about life.”

“From the possible to the infinite,” he smiled in return.

We let that drift into the silence, and I’m still not sure we didn’t sleep. Then, for no reason I understood, I heard myself speaking again.

“And then you met us. And the infinite found a way back.”

He twined an arm over mine, the last of the tension easing from his frame.

“And then we all met,” he agreed, giving me a last reflective glance. For a moment, I could’ve almost sworn he looked sublimely indebted, as if he’d have suffered every ill in the world in exchange for this one chance. “But only you found a way back, Lexie. And I am so, so glad.”

He slept for a long time after that, heavy and listless, sprawled into me with the kind of abandon that years of love can only sometimes know. Because this was more than that. He slept well after Justin had brought us a second blanket, and Abby one of my books, and Rafe a refill on the tea. Until I didn’t have any tears left. And I finally dreamed we were back in the snow, him with his past and me the pretender, holding on to each other and wondering who would be the first to let go.

-

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! <3
> 
> Comments and kudos are always adored and appreciated! (or feel free to say hello and talk to me about the books! always!) *^^*)


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